this is so much bullshit, I cannot even tell you how much bullshit it is
Those of you who follow kateharding.net or shakesville or other feminist/fat acceptance websites - or who follow Kevin Smith's twitter - will have heard about Smith getting kicked off a Southwest flight for being fat. This has started up again discussion of Whether It's Too Gross To Even Deal With If I Have To Sit Next to a Fucking Fatty on an Airplane, and so Kate Harding, my hero, wrote an excellent article on flying while fat for Salon.com.
Now, I did one of those things that you should never ever do: if reading about women's rights, fat acceptance, any kind of politics, racial discrimination, prejudice or privilege of pretty much any kind, do not read the comments. Just don't do it! I know this rule, and yet I break it all the time, out of some sort of horrible self-destructive desire. ANYWAY, in this case, I broke that rule, and read like five pages of comments at that Salon.com article before I had to stop.
And, oh jesus fuck, how much do I hate everyone in the entire fucking world? THIS MUCH.
Because I am just so fucking tired, as a fat woman living in America, of being the sin-eater (literally) for the entire fucking country. You know what, America? I get it. I do. You consume way more fuel, food, energy, natural resources, per capita, than anywhere else in the world, and you know you're supposed to feel bad about that. But getting that consumerist guilt consistently inscribed onto my body, just so that everyone else can reassure themselves that they're not gross disgusting evil consumers, is getting fucking OLD. Now I don't just have to hear about how I'm eating everything in sight while children are starving in third-world countries (what's that? there are scientific studies showing consistently that fat people don't consume more, on average, than thin people? Bah! FAT PEOPLE EAT TOO MUCH IT'S A FACT FOLKS), I now also have to hear about how - wait for it - fat people consume more fuel, as in jet fuel, as in gasoline for cars, than thin people, and therefore we are a strain (haha, strain, get it) on the nation's fuel crisis! This is, of course, in addition to being a strain on the health care system. We just irresponsibly eat and eat and never move (never mind that some people are fat because they're disabled and can't move, it's still their fault if they don't do an hour on the treadmill every day) and as a result don't you know omg we're USING UP THE HEALTH CARE!
The issue, you see, is not that America manages food resources incredibly irresponsibly, that grocery stores routinely throw out tonnes of food, or that everyone - everyone! - in America is encouraged to eat more than they need and encouraged to waste food. It's not that our industrial use of energy and fossil fuel is wasteful, mismanaged, and out of proportion to any other country's use of those same resources. It's not that the fucking health care system is so broken that no one even knows how to fucking fix it, and that practically no one in America is getting adequate health coverage.
It's not that the seats on airlines have gotten smaller and smaller over the last thirty years, or that the airlines care less and less about customers' comfort and more and more about profit margins.
No, it's that I'm taking up too much fucking space. I'm the consumer you can blame; you can tell I'm a wanton consumer by my waist size; if it weren't for me, there would be plenty of health care to go around! Plenty of food for starving waifs, plenty of fuel for thin active soccer moms to gas up their SUVs, plenty of resources. It's not that we need to fix the infrastructure or that there's anything wrong with the way the average American uses food or fuel; it's not that there's anything wrong with giant corporations that will happily trade away resources, dignity, public health, and human life for a profit. None of that stuff is the problem; I am the problem. If I would just fucking go away, there'd be enough food, and fuel, and health care for EVERYONE.
Well, it's not fucking true, is it, and I'm sick of hearing it. I'm sick of being the scapegoated other onto whom this country can slough off its anxieties about consumption.
(anyone who, at this point, wants to concern-troll explain to me that, but really, fat is unhealthy, you really are a drain on the health care system, you really do eat too much, you really are going to keel over and die of deathfat at any moment and those poor thin people who never ever get hypertension or heart attacks are going to have to pay for it - if that is the urge you're feeling right at this moment, I encourage you to either educate yourself about the fact that fat people have longer life expectancy, don't suffer disproportionately from diabetes or high blood pressure, and generally don't use the health care system any more than anyone else - or, if you don't want to educate yourself, but want insist on telling me about that completely unbiased scientific study you read, or maybe it was an article in Vogue - fucking, just, don't. If that's the urge you're feeling, do me a favour: shut the fuck up, because you have no fucking idea what you're talking about.)
(and, while we're at it, if you're in the habit of believing that someone who requires more health care than the average person should be financially, socially, or emotionally penalized for it, maybe you should think through the implications of that idea. Then try to have some fucking human compassion maybe.)
I read those comments over at salon.com, and in addition to the incredibly spurious claim that every single case of diabetes, hypertension, heart-attack, and stroke can be put down to obesity, in addition to the absolute wastes of human existence who would tell a woman who couldn't rush to her dying mother's bedside because of airline travel restrictions that she should just put down the fork - in addition to all that bullshit, I read these fucking comments about how "if they made the seats bigger, they'd have to charge more for the tickets!"
And honestly, I find that just flooring. First of all, as anyone who travelled more than ten years ago and then travelled recently would know if they stopped to think about it, airline seats used to be much bigger, and the airlines pretty much did fine then. And I do not believe that there is in fact a correlation between them making the seats smaller and airline ticket prices coming down. I have a sneaking suspicion that that money went into the profit margin and the bosses' bonuses.
And second of all, oh my god, is this what capitalism has reduced us to? Is it really the situation that, faced with the prospect of a corporation having to make accomodations for its customers (either by making bigger seats or by simply allowing fat folks to have two seats for the price of one), the only situation that people can even imagine is that the airline would then have no choice but to raise ticket prices? Is it really the case that American consumers hate themselves that much? That these people see themselves as the only ones who could possibly pay for such a change in airline policy? That it's just completely inconceivable that the airline itself could pay for such changes without passing it on to the consumer, in order to allow all of their passengers access to basic fucking human dignity? That when there's a question of who is going to pay for human dignity, the answer must of necessity be, not the corporation who has denied it to people in the first place? Boo-hoo, poor multibillion dollar corporations, they have it so fucking tough! They have no choice but to pack people onto planes like sardines, they have no choice but to make the seats smaller, they have no choice but to overbook! They need to MAKE MONEY, PEOPLE! Won't somebody please think of the children profit margins?
Welcome to fucking capitalism: where the American public takes on the sins of corporations, and everyone who isn't white/straight/thin/male/cis/middle-class takes on the sins of that implicitly-white/male/etc American public. But god for fucking bid that we actually address health care in America, or the manner in which the rights of corporations are increasing while the rights of individuals are being systematically destroyed. Much easier to blame it on the fat people. President Obama can't actually do anything to fix the health care system in Congress? That's okay, Michelle Obama will just get those fat kids on treadmills instead - it's those little porkers who are to blame for the health care failure, anyway.
I am just so sick of my fat body being used as a cypher and a warding-off sigil for everything that's wrong with capitalist, consumerist America.
Since I'm on a bit of a roll (hahaha get it) I might as well tax your readerly patience a bit further, and say a little more about fat shame - since, after all, fat shame is operating in full ugly glory in this whole airplane seat conversation. In fact, I might just c/p from something I said a while ago, to my dad, who at the time was pointedly third-party lecturing me about fatness (you know the kind of lecturing I'm talking about - where someone says 'oh, that person over there is fat and is going to die' or 'that person over there is gay and in danger of getting beaten up on the street,' that sort of indirect attempt to point out what they think you must've just not noticed this whole time). Anyway, at the time my dad, whom I love to pieces and who is generally supercool, kept telling me about my (extremely fat) Aunt M, who was having some sort of health problem and had been in the hospital. And even though the doctors, who probably are trained to know the difference, said that it wasn't a heart attack, my dad was just sure it must've been a heart attack - because fat people have heart attacks, right? And any health problem a fat person has must be weight-related, right? And he would go on and on about how my Aunt, his sister, was just in denial about her own health problems and their cause, which, jesus god. So I wrote him this email:But it does really bother me when I hear stuff about how being fat is the same as being unhealthy, or about how - unlike anyone else who's sick - people who DO have health problems related to weight are to blame for their own sickness. I don't blame Aunt E. for dying of cancer, I don't blame gay men in the 80s for contracting AIDS, I don't blame people who live near high voltage lines for their brain tumours or smokers for their emphysema or poor people for their poor nutrition, and I don't blame Aunt M for potentially having health problems related to her weight. And the fact that her doctors have said that her problems aren't related to her weight makes me feel like . . . I don't know, the usual thing that all fat people (especially women) get, which is that anything wrong with our bodies MUST OBVIOUSLY ALWAYS be that we're too fat. Trust me, I've been to doctors who've told me I wouldn't have had the sinus infection I had if I just lost weight. It's a real, damaging, virulent prejudice that causes no end of harm to people, physical harm in the form of diets, misdiagnoses, and doctors who don't listen - and psychological harm in the form of deep, abiding shame. That's shame that emerges from a North American protestant idea that self-denial is good, that taking up less space is good, that virtue is found in those who go without. If Aunt M is sick, it is obviously because she is fat, because fat people lack self-discipline (self-denial), because self-discipline (self-denial) is a virtue, and god punishes the unvirtuous. And trust me on this one, there are already plenty of ways in which women are told to deny themselves, go without, be modest, take up less space - we don't need to add this one to it.
Because the thing is, I don't think the men who yell at me on the street really have my health and best interests at heart when they attempt to shame me. When I read articles about how being obese is awful - because it's unhealthy, of course! we don't mean to say that we value appearance, have impossible beauty standards, and place incredible pressure on women (and, increasingly, on men) to meet those standards, no not at all - all I hear is a sanctioned, socially acceptable version of men yelling at me on the street. And when you tell me, as you've told me at length for the last three phone conversations we've had, that it's really too bad that Aunt M just refuses to acknowledge that she's fat (I'm sure she noticed, actually) or refuses to change her lifestyle (I'm willing to bet she's tried), all I hear is, once again, men yelling at me on the street. When you told me a couple of years ago that you blamed yourself for me being fat, what I heard was "whenever I look at you and you're still fat, I see my failing as a parent." That haunted me for months. You don't know how much shame I felt. Men yelling at me on the street. I used to get yelled at on the street about once every two weeks, when I lived in population-dense downtown Ottawa, for the cardinal sin of being a fat woman who dared to go out in public. I don't doubt that both of your sisters experienced similar things, in their youth. Please think about that before you presume to talk to women about their weight, about how they're in denial, or about how they should just man up and make lifestyle changes. Think about how, when you say such things to or about your sister, she or other women around you (me) are forced to re-experience the bullshit shame that is already heaped upon us to an intolerable degree.
Please consider the fact that other people's bodies are other people's bodies, and that there is already too much policing of bodies that goes on. This is just another in a long line of situations in which women are categorically denied the right to make decisions about their own bodies. It is also another in a long line of situations in which people who are sick are blamed for their illness, in order to make the healthy feel more secure. If I blame so and so for their heart attack, I can rest assured that I will never have one, because I am doing all the RIGHT things, I am virtuous and god loves me.
In conclusion: I don't want to be your sineater anymore. I'm tired of it, and I'm angry at it, and I would really like it to stop.
(click to comment at dw || there are
comments right now)
Now, I did one of those things that you should never ever do: if reading about women's rights, fat acceptance, any kind of politics, racial discrimination, prejudice or privilege of pretty much any kind, do not read the comments. Just don't do it! I know this rule, and yet I break it all the time, out of some sort of horrible self-destructive desire. ANYWAY, in this case, I broke that rule, and read like five pages of comments at that Salon.com article before I had to stop.
And, oh jesus fuck, how much do I hate everyone in the entire fucking world? THIS MUCH.
Because I am just so fucking tired, as a fat woman living in America, of being the sin-eater (literally) for the entire fucking country. You know what, America? I get it. I do. You consume way more fuel, food, energy, natural resources, per capita, than anywhere else in the world, and you know you're supposed to feel bad about that. But getting that consumerist guilt consistently inscribed onto my body, just so that everyone else can reassure themselves that they're not gross disgusting evil consumers, is getting fucking OLD. Now I don't just have to hear about how I'm eating everything in sight while children are starving in third-world countries (what's that? there are scientific studies showing consistently that fat people don't consume more, on average, than thin people? Bah! FAT PEOPLE EAT TOO MUCH IT'S A FACT FOLKS), I now also have to hear about how - wait for it - fat people consume more fuel, as in jet fuel, as in gasoline for cars, than thin people, and therefore we are a strain (haha, strain, get it) on the nation's fuel crisis! This is, of course, in addition to being a strain on the health care system. We just irresponsibly eat and eat and never move (never mind that some people are fat because they're disabled and can't move, it's still their fault if they don't do an hour on the treadmill every day) and as a result don't you know omg we're USING UP THE HEALTH CARE!
The issue, you see, is not that America manages food resources incredibly irresponsibly, that grocery stores routinely throw out tonnes of food, or that everyone - everyone! - in America is encouraged to eat more than they need and encouraged to waste food. It's not that our industrial use of energy and fossil fuel is wasteful, mismanaged, and out of proportion to any other country's use of those same resources. It's not that the fucking health care system is so broken that no one even knows how to fucking fix it, and that practically no one in America is getting adequate health coverage.
It's not that the seats on airlines have gotten smaller and smaller over the last thirty years, or that the airlines care less and less about customers' comfort and more and more about profit margins.
No, it's that I'm taking up too much fucking space. I'm the consumer you can blame; you can tell I'm a wanton consumer by my waist size; if it weren't for me, there would be plenty of health care to go around! Plenty of food for starving waifs, plenty of fuel for thin active soccer moms to gas up their SUVs, plenty of resources. It's not that we need to fix the infrastructure or that there's anything wrong with the way the average American uses food or fuel; it's not that there's anything wrong with giant corporations that will happily trade away resources, dignity, public health, and human life for a profit. None of that stuff is the problem; I am the problem. If I would just fucking go away, there'd be enough food, and fuel, and health care for EVERYONE.
Well, it's not fucking true, is it, and I'm sick of hearing it. I'm sick of being the scapegoated other onto whom this country can slough off its anxieties about consumption.
(anyone who, at this point, wants to concern-troll explain to me that, but really, fat is unhealthy, you really are a drain on the health care system, you really do eat too much, you really are going to keel over and die of deathfat at any moment and those poor thin people who never ever get hypertension or heart attacks are going to have to pay for it - if that is the urge you're feeling right at this moment, I encourage you to either educate yourself about the fact that fat people have longer life expectancy, don't suffer disproportionately from diabetes or high blood pressure, and generally don't use the health care system any more than anyone else - or, if you don't want to educate yourself, but want insist on telling me about that completely unbiased scientific study you read, or maybe it was an article in Vogue - fucking, just, don't. If that's the urge you're feeling, do me a favour: shut the fuck up, because you have no fucking idea what you're talking about.)
(and, while we're at it, if you're in the habit of believing that someone who requires more health care than the average person should be financially, socially, or emotionally penalized for it, maybe you should think through the implications of that idea. Then try to have some fucking human compassion maybe.)
I read those comments over at salon.com, and in addition to the incredibly spurious claim that every single case of diabetes, hypertension, heart-attack, and stroke can be put down to obesity, in addition to the absolute wastes of human existence who would tell a woman who couldn't rush to her dying mother's bedside because of airline travel restrictions that she should just put down the fork - in addition to all that bullshit, I read these fucking comments about how "if they made the seats bigger, they'd have to charge more for the tickets!"
And honestly, I find that just flooring. First of all, as anyone who travelled more than ten years ago and then travelled recently would know if they stopped to think about it, airline seats used to be much bigger, and the airlines pretty much did fine then. And I do not believe that there is in fact a correlation between them making the seats smaller and airline ticket prices coming down. I have a sneaking suspicion that that money went into the profit margin and the bosses' bonuses.
And second of all, oh my god, is this what capitalism has reduced us to? Is it really the situation that, faced with the prospect of a corporation having to make accomodations for its customers (either by making bigger seats or by simply allowing fat folks to have two seats for the price of one), the only situation that people can even imagine is that the airline would then have no choice but to raise ticket prices? Is it really the case that American consumers hate themselves that much? That these people see themselves as the only ones who could possibly pay for such a change in airline policy? That it's just completely inconceivable that the airline itself could pay for such changes without passing it on to the consumer, in order to allow all of their passengers access to basic fucking human dignity? That when there's a question of who is going to pay for human dignity, the answer must of necessity be, not the corporation who has denied it to people in the first place? Boo-hoo, poor multibillion dollar corporations, they have it so fucking tough! They have no choice but to pack people onto planes like sardines, they have no choice but to make the seats smaller, they have no choice but to overbook! They need to MAKE MONEY, PEOPLE! Won't somebody please think of the children profit margins?
Welcome to fucking capitalism: where the American public takes on the sins of corporations, and everyone who isn't white/straight/thin/male/cis/middle-class takes on the sins of that implicitly-white/male/etc American public. But god for fucking bid that we actually address health care in America, or the manner in which the rights of corporations are increasing while the rights of individuals are being systematically destroyed. Much easier to blame it on the fat people. President Obama can't actually do anything to fix the health care system in Congress? That's okay, Michelle Obama will just get those fat kids on treadmills instead - it's those little porkers who are to blame for the health care failure, anyway.
I am just so sick of my fat body being used as a cypher and a warding-off sigil for everything that's wrong with capitalist, consumerist America.
Since I'm on a bit of a roll (hahaha get it) I might as well tax your readerly patience a bit further, and say a little more about fat shame - since, after all, fat shame is operating in full ugly glory in this whole airplane seat conversation. In fact, I might just c/p from something I said a while ago, to my dad, who at the time was pointedly third-party lecturing me about fatness (you know the kind of lecturing I'm talking about - where someone says 'oh, that person over there is fat and is going to die' or 'that person over there is gay and in danger of getting beaten up on the street,' that sort of indirect attempt to point out what they think you must've just not noticed this whole time). Anyway, at the time my dad, whom I love to pieces and who is generally supercool, kept telling me about my (extremely fat) Aunt M, who was having some sort of health problem and had been in the hospital. And even though the doctors, who probably are trained to know the difference, said that it wasn't a heart attack, my dad was just sure it must've been a heart attack - because fat people have heart attacks, right? And any health problem a fat person has must be weight-related, right? And he would go on and on about how my Aunt, his sister, was just in denial about her own health problems and their cause, which, jesus god. So I wrote him this email:But it does really bother me when I hear stuff about how being fat is the same as being unhealthy, or about how - unlike anyone else who's sick - people who DO have health problems related to weight are to blame for their own sickness. I don't blame Aunt E. for dying of cancer, I don't blame gay men in the 80s for contracting AIDS, I don't blame people who live near high voltage lines for their brain tumours or smokers for their emphysema or poor people for their poor nutrition, and I don't blame Aunt M for potentially having health problems related to her weight. And the fact that her doctors have said that her problems aren't related to her weight makes me feel like . . . I don't know, the usual thing that all fat people (especially women) get, which is that anything wrong with our bodies MUST OBVIOUSLY ALWAYS be that we're too fat. Trust me, I've been to doctors who've told me I wouldn't have had the sinus infection I had if I just lost weight. It's a real, damaging, virulent prejudice that causes no end of harm to people, physical harm in the form of diets, misdiagnoses, and doctors who don't listen - and psychological harm in the form of deep, abiding shame. That's shame that emerges from a North American protestant idea that self-denial is good, that taking up less space is good, that virtue is found in those who go without. If Aunt M is sick, it is obviously because she is fat, because fat people lack self-discipline (self-denial), because self-discipline (self-denial) is a virtue, and god punishes the unvirtuous. And trust me on this one, there are already plenty of ways in which women are told to deny themselves, go without, be modest, take up less space - we don't need to add this one to it.
Because the thing is, I don't think the men who yell at me on the street really have my health and best interests at heart when they attempt to shame me. When I read articles about how being obese is awful - because it's unhealthy, of course! we don't mean to say that we value appearance, have impossible beauty standards, and place incredible pressure on women (and, increasingly, on men) to meet those standards, no not at all - all I hear is a sanctioned, socially acceptable version of men yelling at me on the street. And when you tell me, as you've told me at length for the last three phone conversations we've had, that it's really too bad that Aunt M just refuses to acknowledge that she's fat (I'm sure she noticed, actually) or refuses to change her lifestyle (I'm willing to bet she's tried), all I hear is, once again, men yelling at me on the street. When you told me a couple of years ago that you blamed yourself for me being fat, what I heard was "whenever I look at you and you're still fat, I see my failing as a parent." That haunted me for months. You don't know how much shame I felt. Men yelling at me on the street. I used to get yelled at on the street about once every two weeks, when I lived in population-dense downtown Ottawa, for the cardinal sin of being a fat woman who dared to go out in public. I don't doubt that both of your sisters experienced similar things, in their youth. Please think about that before you presume to talk to women about their weight, about how they're in denial, or about how they should just man up and make lifestyle changes. Think about how, when you say such things to or about your sister, she or other women around you (me) are forced to re-experience the bullshit shame that is already heaped upon us to an intolerable degree.
Please consider the fact that other people's bodies are other people's bodies, and that there is already too much policing of bodies that goes on. This is just another in a long line of situations in which women are categorically denied the right to make decisions about their own bodies. It is also another in a long line of situations in which people who are sick are blamed for their illness, in order to make the healthy feel more secure. If I blame so and so for their heart attack, I can rest assured that I will never have one, because I am doing all the RIGHT things, I am virtuous and god loves me.
In conclusion: I don't want to be your sineater anymore. I'm tired of it, and I'm angry at it, and I would really like it to stop.
(click to comment at dw || there are
comments right now)